I have really enjoyed it. I agree with starting as Rome. I have fought off an early rush from Scythia. Boy were they surprised when 4 piddling warriors turned into 4 Roman legions. I do really love the opening cinematic though

If anyone hasn't picked up the expansions you can get all of them for less than three bucks right now until 10/17 (and the game + expansions is $10). I picked up all them during the summer sale and they are absolutely worth it. I have fallen right back into this game. The best part is that most of the new systems are optional for optimum play. And the winters are much more interesting with the addition of pearls to collect.

Really enjoyed the Duelyst discussion. After bouncing off hearthstone after a half hour, I have put in 20 hours in the last two weeks on Duelyst. I love this game! It has tactical depth that was missing from HS. Plus the one turn daily puzzles/challenges remind me of the chess problems from the newspaper way back in the day. It is one of those "I have some time to kill let's play Duelyst. Hey, where did the last 4 hours go?"
Also the 3MA bridge episode sounds awesome

I can't believe I looked up an article on the pizza making robot. The thing I don't see is a pizza dough tossing machine. I guess that's fine if you trying to compete with Domino's or Papa's John's craptastic pizza but please don't try to tell me it's "artisan"
"We created her to spread your sauce perfectly, but not too perfectly, so the pizza still looks like an artisan product," Garden said.
Oh just shut up already you three-eyed warp sick hyper slug

If you haven't looked at Kingdom lately, last week the devs put out Kingdom: New Lands as a free update it adds more stuff and progressively difficult islands to travel to. If you already have Kingdom, just go to the store page for Kingdom: New Lands and click the play now button, it will download the new version.

I remember having to look up letters on the paper manual in the original micropose Pirates! (And you kids think DRM is bad ) Still one of my favorite games. I had played civ when I first found pirates and I was taking AP European History in high school. I loved taking sides and despite general opinion, I really liked the land combat. I enjoyed the beginning of each stage, would you go recruiting for a big army and take down Havana or go slim and track down treasure. It was Grand Theft Auto before there was a GTA.

"The Culture books are amazing. I've been working through them from the start,"
I just read books one and two! Player of Games was really fun read. Reminds me of the times when sci-fi was just a playground of ideas.

What a great game. I had been thinking about buying the tabletop version, but this one is good substitute. I still haven't beaten it yet but after 5 games I think I found my footing. The last game was so frustrating. I took total control of Europe as the US on turn 6. "Great" I thought, "Now just to maintain control until the Europe scoring card comes back around on the reshuffle next turn." On turn 9 (still no Europe card yet) USSR plays the wargames card and wins by 2 points.
I love the atmosphere of this game, the ambient noise and speeches between turns. It really feels like the cold war.

I'm surprised when you were discussing alternative civ formats that no one brought up colonization (Both civ 2 and civ 4 versions) Those mods actually solved the boring late game slog because you were building up to this one thing (independence) and the end game was "hey, ya know that thing you have been working towards all game? Well it's here and it's going to be glorious."

I love how Chris talks about how the title "In the Name of the Rose" just caught his attention. I ran across it in high school, and I loved historical fiction, the older the better. And I was immediately drawr to it when I saw it. It has such a slow yet increasing rhythm. A gumshoe monk investigates a crime, in a medieval monastery.